


He Loves, She Loves

by aintweproudriff



Category: Bandstand - Oberacker/Oberacker & Taylor
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Gen, I love Johnny, Jimmy's not always that bright, Johnny has an older sister, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Wayne is suicidal but it’s only mentioned once, but alas, i will tag the dnb as a relationship until the day i die, lets be honest the whole show should have ended in michael/julia/donny, nick cares a lot actually, wayne is touch averse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-07 13:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15220409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aintweproudriff/pseuds/aintweproudriff
Summary: Each chapter is a different ship in a different soulmate AU! They all still take place in canon timeline, and the chapters go like this:1. Donny/Julia (and some Donny/Michael and Michael/Julia)2. Nick/Wayne3. Jimmy/Johnny4. The Donny Nova Band





	1. Donny/Julia

**Author's Note:**

> I have to appreciate how I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've written anything heterosexual in literally YEARS. Donny and Julia, you should be proud. This chapter is mostly unedited so please be nice to me I'm sensitive  
> (also first soulmate au for the fandom i hope it's good)
> 
> CRITICAL UPDATE THAT I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT: here's my donny/julia playlist that I used to write this. I might make more for different ships if I feel like it, if you have ideas on specific songs that work for specific ships, let me know!! https://open.spotify.com/user/nerdybek/playlist/7h3PzYKN53PC584TLcJtwI

Donny didn’t think he would ever forget that moment. He screamed, jumped, and then, in a flash of light, he lost everything. He refused to believe it had happened, at first, of course. Who could blame him? In the downpour, everything looked colorless anyway, so he clutched the ground and the mud where his friend, his love, his- Michael should have been. But when the rain lifted and the sun rose in what should have been golden, lilac, and crimson skies, there was no way to deny it.

Michael had been the first time Donny saw color. Truthfully, Michael had been the first time Donny had done a lot of things, but color was most important. At only nineteen, Donny had been excited to find his soulmate, but hadn’t expected to find him in basic training. It would always be pressed into his mind how, upon seeing Michael for the first time and catching the flash of blue he would grow to love that resided in Michael’s eyes, he had exclaimed “oh! Like friendship soulmates!” and the whole camp had laughed at him. Michael had choked out some kind of begrudging affirmation, but the first moment that he deemed it safe, he let Donny know that that wasn’t the case.

“I’ve only had one other experience with color,” Michael had confessed late one night in the dim, buzzing yellow light of lightbulbs.

Donny knew that some people had as many as ten soulmates throughout their life. There were even rumors that the average of ten was low. But they were rarely at the same time, because something had happened to the soulmates to “free a person up” for the next soulmate. Death, injury, or a fight were all common ways that soulmate relationships ended.

“What happened with that one?” Donny asked before he could think through how rude that question sounded.

Michael just laughed, and a wave of relief passed over Donny. “I married her. Right before I shipped out.”

Donny blinked in surprise. “And-?”

“And she’s waiting for me in our home in Cleveland. Julia,” he sighed, his eyes glossing over. “Julia Trojan, now that we’re married.”

“I didn’t know you were married,” Donny pursed his lips.

“Well, I just told you!”

“But then why insist on being romantic?” he leaned forwards on the table. “I mean, if you’ve got a girl at home, then why not keep it friendly with you and me?”

Michael leaned forward too, so that he was matching Donny’s pose exactly from across the table and forcing their faces together. “‘Cause I feel like it’s the right way to go. Don’t you?”

In that instant, Donny couldn’t honestly say no.

“When I met Julia,” Michael sat back, satisfied with Donny’s lack of an answer, “I got about half of my color vision. And I thought ‘okay, that’s it. That’s all there is to it; color is a tint, a tinge to everyday life. It’s not all that much different from how I used to live’. Don’t get me wrong,” he put his hand flat on the table, “I loved it. She made everything so beautiful, so soft and homey. Like her personality does,” he shrugged and laughed nostalgically.

Donny smiled, happy to watch his soulmate so in love with his wife.

“And then I met you, and every color sprang to life,” Michael said in the same breath. “Everything got more intense. And I saw the color of your eyes against your uniform and I thought: ‘oh, that’s what green looks like when it's not muted. I like it.’

Donny grinned and folded his hands on the table. Michael reached across and put his hand on top of Donny’s.

“I wonder sometimes if in another world, if I met you first and then Julia, if it would have happened that way too. And then I stop and take a minute to be happy that it happened the way it happened. I think she softens me and you strengthen me, Nova. I don’t think I’d be much good without either of you. So I never want to have to be without either of you.”

“Don’t wanna do nothin’ without you either,” Donny whispered, saying it even though it scared him.

It was worth it when Michael smiled that wide and pressed Donny’s hands to his lips. Donny didn’t say it, but he wondered if Michael had been romancing his wife so long that he didn’t know how to romance a man. He wondered why he didn’t mind the gesture, even though it was the kind of thing Michael probably did to his wife.

“I’m going to go write to her now,” Michael stood up and pushed his chair in. “Tell her the good news.”

-

“Dear Julia,” was how he started every single letter to his wife. Each and every dutifully dated letter in the stack through which Donny was looking began simply with “Dear Julia,” and ended with “Yours, Michael.”

It was strange to read his letters in chronological order after-the-fact. It was more odd to have Julia Trojan herself pass the letters to him and tell him to read them from oldest to newest. He wished he could describe her house in terms of color: he was sure it was lovely, but he knew that she hadn’t decorated it (recently, at least) because after Michael’s death, she could see as much color as he could.

“They were always as much to you as they were to me,” she admitted. “At least, all the parts where he told me he loved me and how he couldn’t wait to introduce his two soulmates to each other. That part was for you too. The parts about how war is hell you already knew.”

Donny smiled at her attempt at lightening the mood. “I felt like I knew you already from the way he talked about you.”

Julia hummed. “He always wrote in red ink,” she mumbled as she thumbed through the papers gently. “He said he wanted to-”

“-remember happier things, like color, even when he-”

“-wrote about war,” Julia laughed, and it sounded like church bells.

“He always was so predictable, wasn’t he?” Donny smiled.

“Every day the same routine, every letter the same outline, every outfit ironed identically,” Julia nodded, uncrossing her knees and sinking into the cushions.

“He fit right in in the army,” Donny mimicked her posture. “I remember he had the same look in his eye when he sat down to write to you. He missed you so much, it was like it ate away at him.”

“He always wrote to me about you,” Julia touched his arm, and he wondered if he caught a flash of blue in her eyes too. He dismissed the idea as quickly as it came; he had been known to imagine colors. Apparently, it was common in people who lost soulmates in traumatic ways. “You’re in every one of his letters. So that lovelorn look was about you too.” The corners of her mouth turned up. “I feel like I know everything about you, but nothing about you too. He loved your music the most. He wouldn’t stop writing about it. I’m excited to hear you play.”

Donny heard Michael’s praising voice in his head and smiled despite himself. “I miss him,” he said, and felt stupid even saying it because it was so obvious.

“Me too,” she frowned. “But I think I’m almost glad that I lost him, and he didn’t lose me. Um, that -” she scrunched her eyes together when she saw Donny’s confused look, and there was a flash of a color (pink, Donny’s head supplied) in her cheeks. “That sounded bad. I mean to say that he would hate this - the black and white and the waiting - more than I do.”

“I don’t feel the same,” Donny shook his head. “Most days, I wish it had been me and not him.”

He ignored Julia’s surprise.

“He still would have had you. Half of his color vision is better than none of mine. Hell, half of him is better than all of me.”

Julia tutted. “He’d tell you to shut up.”

“I know.”

“He’d say that he loved me and what I gave him,” Julia’s eyes were kind as they studied Donny’s face. “And I don’t doubt that. I know I was his world. That’s why he married me. But once he’d seen full color, once he had you, he never would have been able to go back to fifty percent again. It would have torn him apart.” She sighed. “That’s what he would tell you. You know what I say?”

He looked up, and she took his hand, rubbing his knuckles with her thumb. “What?”

“I say that he would have had me if he came back. He’ll always have a piece of me. But you came back, not him,” she squeezed his hand, and something flashed. “And now you have me too. And this band you've put together, too. Okay?”

Julia’s couch was green. That’s what green looked like. He liked it.


	2. Nick/Wayne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you touch your soulmate for the first time, a telepathic bond is established.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also I can't write Wayne and Nick they are Difficult. I was going to have this chapter be more but they weren't having it and honestly that's for the best  
> Edit: it autocorrected grady to gracey and i only noticed it almost a week after it had been published i wanna die

He liked to be right. Precise, concise, and keep things where they needed to be. If he, and all his things, and everyone else stayed in their own lane, then he would be satisfied. He would be able to keep moving forward, keep pushing on, like he had done in the line: one man marching after another, perfectly in time.  
But the way that people worked, lived, and moved was right. People were messy. People ran late. People touched other people because they liked how it felt, or liked how when they touched the right person at the right time, they started to hear their thoughts in their head. People said it was reassuring to hear a voice in their head telling them that someone loved them, and needed them to pick up milk on their way home from work. Wayne just thought it would be loud. Someone else thinking in his ear sounded miserable. Weren’t his own thoughts loud enough? Didn’t he have enough voices in his head? They were always telling him he needed to wash his hands again, clean the gun again, hold the gun in his hands a little longer, and then maybe one day get the courage to do what should already have been done. 

Wayne counted himself lucky that he didn’t have to hear another voice in his head. He kept to a strict rule: don’t touch. And he never did, if he could help it. 

There were exceptions, because the rule of rules was that nothing was definite. That was bullshit. Rules were definite, and any ‘exception’ was rule breaking.  
Maggie had broken the rule. She touched him and heard his voice “like a song stuck in my head,” she told him. It was long before the war, long before everything became bad and then worse. Even then, his thoughts had been relentless and persistent to say the least. She said she didn’t mind, and that she loved hearing his thoughts because she loved him, and that she only wished that he heard her voice in his head in return so that she could remind him every minute of every day that he was loved. He knew, however, that hearing how the thought about himself and about other people hurt and tired her even before he shipped off. They eventually made a system when they were married: he said none of his thoughts aloud, since she could hear everything he thought, and she said all of hers, so that neither of them were overwhelmed by Wayne’s ideas.  
Emily and Grady broke the rule as well. They hugged his knees, asked to be picked up when they fell and skinned their knees, and even when he held them as babies, cradled them as he gave them bottles, it felt wrong. It had happened before that a parent and child would become familial soulmates. It was common, actually. His sister and mother had shared a thought bond. He had hoped when he first heard that Maggie was pregnant that one of his children that one of his children would be his familial soulmate. Maggie thought it was a good idea: it would force him to keep sad thoughts to himself, and put happy thoughts in his head. There was no such luck for Wayne. He supposed it was for the best when he enlisted. He couldn’t imagine putting thoughts of actual war in the head of a child. 

People in general broke the rule often as well. There were whole groups of people - religions, almost - dedicated to going out and making physical contact with as many people as possible in the hopes of establishing thought bonds. He avoided these people when he could. It was easy to spot them based on their wide eyes and feigned clumsiness. 

The strangest group of people to break the rule, however, was a group of people who he had expected to think like him. He knew upon attending the first practice that these were all veterans, and found that all of them walked with burdens of war on their backs. So he had foolishly assumed that none of them would touch, and that none of them would want to share thoughts with another person. How wrong he had turned out to be. Instead, all of them craved it. Grabbing onto each others’ shoulders, arms, hugs and hand-squeezes when little things happened that made them feel any kind of strong emotion. He had found himself explaining in the politest terms possible (at least he thought he had been polite) that he did not want to be touched if possible. Donny listened decently well, keeping his hands and body away from Wayne when they interacted. Julia did the same, although she liked to hold onto his arm sometimes if she felt excited, and she loved to invite him to dance whenever she could. He preferred to excuse himself from the dancing, but she called it a rain check, so he knew it wouldn’t last forever. Johnny sometimes struggled to remember, but if he got too close, Wayne could give him a look and he would understand the warning for what it was. Not that if he forgot, Wayne would ever do anything to antagonize Johnny, but it was good to have a base level of understanding. At first, Wayne wondered if maybe Jimmy would struggle with his request, since he was often lending Johnny or Donny or Davy a helping hand, but he was relieved to notice that Jimmy possessed a certain talent for rigidly respecting other men’s boundaries. Nick was never an issue, for what Wayne supposed was the first time in his life. For all of Nick’s anger, it was rare that he truly overstepped boundaries. Davy was the issue more often than not. Tormenting Wayne turned into the joke of the century for Davy. He wondered if Julia or Donny had spoken to him, though, once he started to lay off a bit. 

Overall, the band was an easy way to be with people without having to share his thoughts. They never intruded, like he felt Maggie had. Until, of course, Nick invited him to be the ‘live in maid’. He had considered refusing the offer, but living with anyone, even Nick, was better than the hotel. And Nick had always been respectful of boundaries. Wayne just hadn’t expected his place to be so - small.  
It was cramped but not unlivable for two people who didn’t mind bumping into each other once in a while. Therein lied the problem, seeing as Wayne did very much mind.  
He managed to avoid contact for all of three days, and let his guard slip at a horrible time: early in the morning.  
Before coffee, both he and Nick were dead on their feet, more out of tune to the rest of the real world than normal. So it made sense that the disaster occurred early in the morning, as Nick reached for the coffee pot. Simply a hand on Wayne’s back, heat over a white undershirt, and then a bump of a hand as he grabbed the handle was enough to send Wayne’s head into a spiral. The surprise, the unexpectedness, and the thought that somehow he’d made a mistake threw him off balance. 

“Sorry,” Nick grumbled, and for one brief moment, Wayne assumed that the apology would be the end of it. He almost accepted the apology, until-

_Shouldn’t have done that. Knew he hates it. Said I wasn’t gonna._

That was unmistakably Nick’s voice. But Nick’s mouth hadn’t moved. So -

_What. The. Fuck._

Wayne turned around, his hands shaking around the mug of coffee he held. Nick looked up at him, his eyebrows beginning to cover his eyes. 

“Nick, did you just-”

“Shut up.”

_Did I just._

“Yeah, you did just,” Wayne breathed. “You did just think something and I heard it.”

“Did you say ‘what the fuck’?”

_Yeah, I did. In my head._

“You did?” Nick set his mug down. “Well fuck.”

The room started to spin. Wayne leaned against the countertop. 

_I’d been so careful to not have to deal with this and now Nick is hearing things and god Nick of all people, who already has so much to deal with without all of my shit. I watched Maggie get torn apart with the things I thought and couldn’t do that, not when he let me move in. And god I’m staying in his house it’s not like this could have been avoided then so I just should never have moved in. If he didn’t already hate me before, he sure will once he sees how much I hate-_

“Hey.” Nick’s voice, spoken through the air, very nearly cut off his train of thought. 

_He’s about to kick me out and I’m going to go back to the hotel and-_

“You’re an idiot. You know that?”

Wayne looked up to see Nick, seated at the table, his face stoic as ever. 

“Yeah I know.”

 _If you can hear me, and I know you can_ , Nick’s voice told him, _then there’s a reason for it. Obviously._

_You’re not kicking me out?_

_No. Are you going to leave?_

Wayne shook his head. _No. But I - my voice is kind of. I have been told that my voice is hard to deal with at times. I tend to get, um, obsessive._

_Yeah no shit. If you can put up with me, I’ll put up with you. Not that it seems like we have much choice._

Wayne laughed in spite of himself, and felt a surge of - joy, maybe? - to hear Nick laughing out loud as well. His feet landed on the floor again. 

The moment of peace ended as soon as Nick stood up. His spoon in his mug rattled as he set it down in the sink. As he made his way out of the room, Nick’s hand linked around Wayne’s waist. 

_That okay?_

Wayne swallowed heavily. _Yeah. Sure._

_Good. Tell me if something’s not okay._

_You - um. Yeah, sure._

Nick smiled and left, leaving Wayne with some sort of fuzz in his head. He wanted to clean it out, but found that he didn’t know quite how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! I appreciate you personally. Also I haven't done html in forever wow even the italics seemed hard


	3. Johnny/Jimmy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You hear your soulmate's voice in your head, but only when they sing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote most of this in one day please be nice to me. I say that every chapter but please be nice to me in general. Also I forgot that Jimmy technically sings in You Deserve It, but whatevvvver. Also I used @richardhblakes/hensleywrites's fic to help inspire me to write a halfway decent kiss, thank you so much for that.

Johnny’s head was pretty reliable. Not always in the way he would have liked, of course. When it came to remembering names, places, dates, and faces, his brain left him without saying goodbye. When it came to music, however, his brain reliably kept time, memorizing every beat and key and word. He could hear a song once and know exactly the way to move the drumsticks to give the same impression as the recording, or he could switch it up his own way to make it more emotional, exciting, or romantic. He had possessed the talent for all his life, or so he was told. In the end, it didn’t matter if he had known how to do it before the accident or not. He’d take what he had now: a disposition for understanding the ins and outs of music, an appreciation for jokes, and a band who worked with him.

For all that was good, he missed something. Many days, he didn’t know what exactly it was. But then he would be sitting and he would hear the words of a song and begin to drum along, despite thinking that he had never heard the song before, at least not to his recollection. And then it would hit him, a small fragment of a memory from long ago: his soulmate’s voice in his head, singing the words of a bridge or an opening to a song. As he listened in real time, the words that he did remember always faded away as soon as the brass picked up, a fact to which he never paid much attention, because the memory was gone as soon as it arrived, and he was memorizing the music again.

He liked his soulmate’s voice when he heard it. That much he knew for certain, both from stories he'd been given and his own memories; it had been airy, almost sweet. A man’s voice, not a woman’s. He’d only ever told his older sister Nancy, who had told him that he should keep quiet about that. His sister had been his biggest confidant as he grew up, and the one he talked to when he could go to no one else about wondering why his soulmate might be a man. When he got home and she had been waiting, he had wanted be able to talk to her like he used to. But it didn’t happen that way, because if he couldn’t remember the path to take from his parents’ front door to his childhood bedroom, then he sure didn’t know what to talk about. She had heard the story about the jeep ‘one too many times,’ and she didn’t like to hear about ‘her baby brother getting hurt’. So he did his best to keep from talking about it. He didn’t remember the events that had shaped the shared relationship that once resided in the walls of that house and still resided in Nancy’s heart. There was very little to talk about that didn’t involve her explaining the streets of the city to him like he was a child, as if he hadn’t lived in Cleveland his whole life.

She asked about his soulmate once. He had turned his head and watched her as her long blonde hair fell out of the knot at the top of her head and into her face. He wondered if she felt stressed. He wondered if he was making her stressed.

“Have you heard your soulmate’s voice at all, Jack?” she had asked, her face growing darker with every second he stared blankly.

He shook his head. “I didn’t think I had a soulmate.”

He noticed the wrinkles on Nancy’s forehead. “You have a soulmate. You used to hear him sing all the time. Do you not remember that?”

“No,” Johnny stepped forward. “Sorry, I don’t remember a lot of things because-”

She took a deep breath, setting her shoulders square. “No. I know that. I was hoping you’d still know about your soulmate. But you haven’t heard anyone singing?”

He shook his head again, not knowing what else to say.

“I’m sorry,” she hummed. “I wish you had. It’s so nice to hear someone sing.”

“Do you hear someone sing?” he rubbed his hands together.

She smiled, but it wasn’t happy. Her smile turned bitter. “My husband.”

“You’re married?”

She looked up at him with sad eyes. “Well, yes. Anyway,” she shook her head as if clearing the thoughts from her mind, “my question was if you’ve heard your soulmate, and you haven’t, and that’s that. I do hope he’s okay.”

With that, she turned on her heel and walked out the door. She liked to be over during the day, but left at night. To be with her kids: her sons. And, he supposed, her husband.

The house felt suddenly hollow with her gone. Her parting words rang in Jimmy’s ear. What if something had happened to his soulmate? If he was a man, and Nancy had called him a he, then maybe he had been drafted or enlisted. Or, if he wasn’t American, and Johnny had no evidence to say that he was, then maybe he had been in one of the militaries of another nation. Maybe he had been an ally. Maybe he had been a part of the Axis Powers, and fought against Johnny. Maybe the two of them had met, at some point. Maybe he had even fought at Johnny’s side. Maybe Johnny had known him but not written Nancy about him out of fear of the letters containing the secret that his soulmate was a man being found, causing her to not know about him, and Johnny forgot him, so no one knew who he was.

Maybe he had died. And Johnny didn’t know. Maybe his soulmate had been one of the ones who didn’t make it home, but Johnny had, and he’d never hear a sweet, airy voice in his head again.

Most of the time, he knew that his ignorance was bliss. But just this once, he wondered if it might be better to know and have certainty for once in his life, about this crucial matter of the person - man - who was supposedly his other half.

He ran a hand over the top of his head, coming through his hair, and checked the clock. It was late. He hoped that a lot of time had passed, and that he had been thinking for a long time. Otherwise, he had kept Nancy much too late. And with the kids and her husband at home-

He popped his regular dosage of pills in his mouth and swallowed, wanting to ignore his thoughts for the rest of the night.

-

The drums were the best part of being home. He certainly loved Nancy and Cleveland more than Germany, but neither of them could hold a candle to the way that it felt to play drums as a part of something bigger than himself. When Wayne had recommended him to Donny, and when he had met Donny, he had known in his gut that this was the direction in which he needed to go. And he had been right. Even the first song, called “Ain’t We Proud,” felt right somehow. The tempo, the lyrics, the brass and bass: all of it lined up perfectly. It was the patriotic anthem that the contest wanted, and he loved it. The best part of it was watching his new bandmates excel when they pulled out all the stops for their solos, and it was fun to throw in a quick one of his own sometimes.

There was one thing off about it, however. There was one point in the song where Donny had everyone in the band, even Wayne and Nick, singing with him. It was only one line, sung twice. Still, that hadn’t been the expectation. All of them went along with it, of course. It was a fun idea, and Johnny liked to sing.

The issue arose the first time they sang it. He, Davy, Nick, Wayne, and Jimmy all shouted together: “the boys are back!” Then Donny sang it again, and the five of them echoed the call-and-response. But Johnny swore he heard a voice inside his head, singing the same line with the band.

He decided it was best to ignore it. It was likely that the acoustics in the practice room reverberated in his head. And later, when they played onstage, he heard it again at the exact same time. But it was probably just the crowd, or maybe Davy sang too loud.

Either way, it didn’t matter.

He made sure to tell the band after that first gig that he was happy to be in the band.

-

It took awhile for the band to mesh. Johnny was willing to put his all into the group from day one, but not everyone felt the same way. That would have been okay, if they hadn’t been trying to win something. It took Julia, her song, and denial from Bayer Aspirin to give them all a shared goal. That was why Johnny loved “Nobody” so much. If they hadn’t been cohesive before, “Nobody” sure proved that they were now. Better yet, it proved that they were one incredible group because of the individuals that they were. Each of them had singing solos, a moment in the spotlight for each of them. His was simple: “you know who tells me quit?”

The band didn’t actually get a chance to practice the solo parts before performing it at a gig. In the rush to book as many gigs as possible, they were only able to practice the part that they all played together. Donny instructed everyone to practice their line or two alone, and go over the music so they knew who they sang it with. Johnny did go over it, multiple times, and when it came his turn, he didn’t mess up even once. Not even when Jimmy sang his quick line: “you know who tells me ‘you ain’t worth spit’,” and that was definitely Jimmy’s voice coming out of Jimmy’s mouth, but it was also Jimmy’s voice in Johnny’s head. Despite his limbs going numb, Johnny managed to repeat his line and answer it: “No-body.” Then he let his muscle memory (wasn’t that ironic, that his muscles and his memory had been messed up, and he had to trust them both to keep going) finish the beat on the song. Luckily, they had saved that song for the end of the set.

“Jimmy,” he stood up and beelined for his friend when the song was over.

Jimmy looked up at him, his eyes charged with excitement, like they usually were after a gig. Johnny didn’t know how he hadn’t taken a good look at Jimmy’s eyes before. “Yeah, what?”

Johnny’s blood ran cold. Had Jimmy not heard his voice when he had sung? Johnny had sung twice the amount that Jimmy had, and now that he considered it, this was the second time that Johnny had heard Jimmy’s voice in his head recently. It should have been Jimmy’s second time too. So if he didn’t know by now, then there were a few explanations. Either Jimmy had missed the obvious clues (Johnny let that idea drop as soon as he had it - Jimmy was too smart not to pick up on that), or -

“Uh, nothin’. Wanted to say good job. On the whole gig. You played real well.”

Jimmy nodded curtly, happily. “Thanks, Johnny. You too.”

Johnny hummed sadly.

That night, he went home to find Nancy asleep on his couch. She started awake the minute he closed the door.

“Johnny!” she sat up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to still be here. I should leave so you can-”

“I heard his voice again, Nance.” He didn’t know if he had ever called her Nance before, but it felt right in his mouth, so he didn’t ponder on it for long.

“Oh that’s so good!” she smiled wide, not feeling a need to ask for clarification. She knew him so much better than he knew her, so much better than he knew himself. But Johnny didn’t have to know what she meant by this: she was celebrating that he wasn’t dead.

He shook his head and sat down next to her. “He’s in the band. And I sang tonight too.”

“Oh?”

“He didn’t hear my voice in his head.”

She put her hand on Johnny’s back. “Oh, honey. I’m sorry. Maybe he did and he didn’t want to say something, out of fear?”

“I don’t think so.” Jimmy seemed pretty unafraid of letting people know how he was. He had the law in his head, after all. “But thanks, Nancy. You should head home.”

She rubbed her eyelid, smearing her makeup around her eyes. “If I have to.”

She did leave, after fixing her hair and makeup. “I’m already late,” she said, “I may as well keep his anger to a minimum by staying his pretty little wife.”

That left Johnny alone. At almost two in the morning, his head hummed. The melody of his and Jimmy’s shared solo played once or twice in his mind, and then stopped.

-

Hearing Jimmy’s voice in his head became more and more regular as practices and gigs with the band went on. Not only was Jimmy singing in the songs they played, but he was singing outside of the band, too. Johnny loved it. Nancy was right; it was nice, in a way, to hear a voice in his head, singing to him as he went about his day. Some days, it felt like it took some of the pain away. It didn’t, but it helped. It helped when it didn’t cause more pain every time he looked at Jimmy, at least.

-

Johnny was given another solo, a long one, in their newest song. Donny was playing the drums - or rather drum - while Johnny was going to sing. It was fun to change it up a little bit, to have fun with a song celebrating the city that he had relearned and now loved. They went over it once at practice, his feet tapping the beat. He couldn’t help himself, he was a drummer by nature.

“When Bob Hope was only called Lester-”

Wayne, Donny, Nick, and Davy took part in the backup singing. Jimmy was supposed to, but his eyes shot up to Johnny’s face, his eyes wide. Johnny blinked in surprise at the intensity of his stare, but kept singing.

“A busker in old Luna Park-”

Jimmy picked up with the backup singing again, but he ran his hands over the body of his saxophone anxiously.

“Who’da guessed that that poor little jester in the movies would make such a mark?”

The song ended, but not without Jimmy watching Johnny as he returned to the drums, and Johnny deciding to stare right back. It was easy to watch Jimmy, for obvious reasons, and this time, unlike every other time he had wanted to sit and stare at Jimmy, Johnny let himself do it.

“Johnny,” Jimmy said as they were packing up. “I, uh. Shit.”

Johnny raised his eyebrows.

“I heard your voice when you sang your solo. In my head. I thought, uh, that I should tell you.” He twisted his hands together, and took a deep breath, straightening his shoulders as if making a decision. “Because if someone heard my voice in their head, I would want to know. You don’t happen to, do you? Hear my voice in your head?”

“Um, yeah, actually. I do.”

Jimmy’s body jerked. “You do?”

Johnny nodded.

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I thought that you hadn’t heard mine,” he explained, stuffing his hand in his pocket. “I didn’t wanna make things awkward.”

“Well,” Jimmy shrugged. “I suppose I understand that. I just said, ‘fuck it, I survived all that, I’ll survive this too’. Maybe not the best plan of action, but-”

“No, no, I get it. Have you heard my voice before?” Johnny asked out of genuine curiosity.

“Now that you bring it up, I have. I didn’t know it was you, I thought it was just the band while we were playing, but once you got a solo like that-” Jimmy laughed and looked at the floor. “Hard to deny. Had you heard my voice before?”

Johnny shrugged, tapping his fingers on his leg. “I’ve been told I heard a man’s voice a long time ago. When I got back, I didn’t remember it. And I didn’t hear a voice until the band formed, which I guess is when you were singing with the band. My sister figured that since you were a man and I had heard singing before the war but not after it, my soulmate was probably dead. I was halfway to believing her, too.”

“Oh my god,” Jimmy’s shoulders fell. “I didn’t like to sing much at all after the war. I used to have a voice in my head that sang all the time. It wasn’t you, I hope that’s okay with you.”

Johnny nodded, knowing that things like that happened often.

“And when we found each other, we would sing often. And then I lost him and I lost his voice and I couldn’t bring myself to make music outside of saxophone again.”

His eyes were so empty, none of the post-show adrenaline still in them.

“And then I was in the band, and then I was singing - not by choice, of course, until eventually I started wanting to sing again. But you heard me, and I guess I hear you. And then here we are.”

“Here we are,” Johnny echoed. “I’m glad you want to sing again, but if you don’t want to be more than friends because of your old soulmate, then I’m okay with that. Promise.”

Jimmy shook his head, a smile playing on his lips. “I think there’s more to us than voices in our head.”

“You think this was already going to happen, and my solo sped it up?” Johnny asked for clarification.

Jimmy nodded then, closing his eyes like there was some joke that Johnny didn’t get.

“I’d agree.” Johnny hadn’t realized it, but both he and Jimmy had inched closer to each other as the conversation had worn on. If he leaned forward, he could touch Jimmy’s cheek with the tips of his fingers. So he did just that, and reveled for a moment in the heat emitting from the soft skin. If he leaned forward again-

Jimmy leaned forward first, actually. Not that it mattered much once their lips were together and Johnny noticed how Jimmy’s lips were warmer than his cheeks, which flushed bright red when Johnny leaned back to offer Jimmy a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nancy is totally new but I love her. Also, if it wasn't obvious, her husband is abusive and I wish she could be happy. 
> 
> On another note, thanks so much as always for reading!!! Comments would make me so happy!!!  
> Again, I'm always up for suggestions of new playlists for any of the members/ships of the dnb


	4. Davy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Classic AU where you share a soulmark with your soulmate. I couldn't help myself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's Jimmy/Davy in here, but it's blink-and-you'll-miss-it fast. I stand by the idea that the dnb are soulmates yall.   
> This isn't proofread or anything be nice to me please

It was a common mark, to say the least. At least, variations of it were common. A single music note was something that many people, maybe as many as five percent of the world’s population according to a newspaper he read a few years ago, had. He doubted many of those were like his, though. Many of the notes were indistinguishable, since there was no clef or lines to show what the note might be. Many of the notes were in the treble clef; singers and people who played little instruments had those. Davy’s, however, was a little stranger, although not surprising. A d note in the bass clef, the third line from the bottom.   
It made sense, of course, the first time he’d picked up the bass and began to - badly - pluck out a tune. The bass had seemed three times his size then, and his family had laughed at him when he said how much he loved it. But the bass clef on his left hand wasn’t lying, and he kept playing. 

People who could read music liked to ask what the ‘d’ stood for as he got older. When he was young, he liked to say it stood for Davy. That always got a laugh.   
Then he went through a phase where he liked to start all his songs on that note. Sometimes it sounded strange, of course, but he did it anyway, and told people that the ‘d’ stood for the music he played. It made sense to do it that way. Playing music was easier than dealing with what was happening in the rest of the world, the threats of war in the news. Having a routine for when he played music, even a little one, made it even easier.   
In college, he joked that it stood for Demetrius - from the Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream \- who was tricked into both loving and fighting. Although he wasn’t sure if it could be called tricked, truthfully. He’d had the passion and anger inside him the whole time. Still, it had been funny when he had called himself Helena, obsessed with Demetrius, and constantly in pursuit of the meaning on his arm.   
At one point, he’d thought it stood for a girl’s name. They had been Dee and Davy for about a year and a half, and then he’d enlisted and she hadn’t been sure she could stay loyal. He wished she had told him before he left, and not in her first letter to him, but he wrote back that he understood, and that this way, he didn’t have to stay loyal either.   
He brought back the joke that it stood for Davy, because he was the only one he could really count on. It didn’t get as many laughs when he was 27 as it had when he was 7.   
Then he said it stood for drunk. That might have been the most appropriate answer since he’d said it was for his music. No one could deny that much, since as soon as he started drinking, it seemed he was always in some level of drunkenness. And sometimes, at a bar or in the barracks after a long day, he still got a laugh from a crowd with it. So that factor was fun. The hangovers hurt like hell though. His soulmate couldn’t be the numbness that came with alcohol, no matter how much he wanted it to be. 

He wasn’t bitter that he hadn’t found his soulmate. Obviously, there were many things in the world that made him happy, enough to fill both his days and nights for weeks on end. He didn’t need one person to fill a gap in his life, he could fill it just fine with drinks and books and music and random women (and men) and gigs when he could get them. 

The band was just supposed to be another one of those things. Another time filler, another time waster. He’d heard that Donny was good (“a prodigy” said his cousin), so he was planning on saying yes anyways. Long before Jimmy walked in, a man who he assumed was Donny in tow. Long before Donny had offered his hand to shake, and Davy had noticed a flash of black on Donny’s wrist - a bass clef. He couldn’t see all of it, so he smiled and made a note in his head to remember that, and try to get a better luck later. When Jimmy sat next to him, brandishing a cigarette in that way he did, waving his hand around with a flick of his wrist, Davy thought he saw something similar. He made sure to shake Jimmy’s hand before they left to get a better look and that was, without a doubt, a d note on a bass clef. In all the two or three times that the two of them had met up (okay, Davy knew it was more than two or three times, but he found it best to not think about those in daylight), he didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed that he and Jimmy had matching marks. It seemed unlike him to let something like that get past him, but it wasn’t like Jimmy had ever brought it up.   
He did what he thought would be best in this kind of situation, which was one he’d heard of before but never experienced. He suggested Nick: the only other person he knew of who both played an instrument they needed had something similar on his wrist. Or at least, he thought Nick had something similar on his wrist. It had been a long time since he’d seen Nick, and it’s just his luck that when he talks to him when he brings Donny to him, he can’t see Nick’s left wrist under his long sleeves.   
Not that it mattered if Jimmy or Donny or Nick happened to have a mark that looked like his. Davy went over the many reasons why it didn’t matter. Number one: all three of them were men; in his mind, men were good for hookups, but not okay for long-term romantic soulmates. Number two: he was about to be in a band with all three of them, and there was no time for distractions. Number three: if they shared similar marks, then it was possible that they were each other’s soulmates, not Davy’s. Number four: it was a common enough mark anyways, so Davy’s imagination had become overactive and he was blowing this out of proportion. 

He decidedly didn’t let anything interfere with his playing when he was with the Donny Nova Band. He even made sure he was never too drunk to play. Around that group of people, the drinks became less of a necessity and more of an added bonus: something that made life more fun, not just bearable.   
In that same vein, he didn’t let his constant glances towards his new friends’ wrists get in the way of playing. He couldn’t keep himself from looking at Wayne when he extended the slide on the trombone all the way and left his left wrist exposed, or from looking at Johnny when he reached up to grab his hat off his head, or from looking at Julia when she thoughtlessly touched Jimmy’s shoulder in her easy, comforting way. But he could keep the thought of ‘holy shit that matches mine perfectly’ out of his head. Or at least he could expel it before it made him falter on the beat. 

Nick brought it up first. Nick had a way of doing that. 

“I think Donny and Julia have matching marks,” he told Davy one night after a gig, in the dim light of a bar that was quickly being abandoned for the night. His tone was interesting: not a question, but not sure.

“Oh yeah?” Davy sat his glass on the wood. “Did you see ‘em?”

“I think so,” Nick said. “I’m not sure, because it’s one of those general music ones that lots of people have. Hell, I’ve got something similar.”

Davy tried not to laugh. “Well what do theirs look like?”

“A bass clef. I didn’t get a good look at what the note is, so it could be a ‘d’ or an ‘a’ or an ‘f’.”

“Huh. I’ve got one that’s pretty similar too,” Davy took a sip. “What’s yours like?”

Nick rolled up his sleeve, and Davy remembered that his was the only soulmark he hadn't seen yet. But if he said that it was similar to Donny and Julia’s, then-

“A bass clef and a ‘d’.” Nick traced lines on his arm. 

Davy held out his arm. “Well, what do ya know?”

Seeing the two marks together, it would have been impossible to deny that they were identical.

“Donny’s and Julia’s match,” Davy said, as matter-of-fact as he had wanted Nick to be when he brought up the subject. 

“So does Wayne’s.”

Davy didn’t ask how Nick knew that. “Jimmy’s does too, I think. And probably Johnny’s.”

Nick took a nice, long swig of his drink. Davy didn’t blame him. He’d have done the same, only he felt like this should be something for which he should stay sober. This and playing were the only things he could think of that fit that description. 

“What do you figure it means?” Nick rasped. 

Davy smiled. He’d thought about that exact question enough that he had an answer. “I figure it means that this band was supposed to play together. Supposed to go all the way to New York and beyond together.”

Nick drained the rest of his glass. “Guess I should probably say ‘fuck you’ to Dwight Anson then, huh?”

Davy choked on the sip he was trying to take. “Shoulda said that anyway.”

-

They did go all the way to New York and beyond, even if they skipped Hollywood while en route. The ‘beyond’ gave them plenty of time to discuss everything, and the marks became a popular topic. They came to the same conclusion Davy had. The seven of them were meant to play together. Pairs, couples, and triples were formed over time within the band, but the most important thing was that they were all united in more than one thing: the music, their experiences, and their friendships.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay I'm not a fan of that ending but I did love writing this fic!! If you enjoyed reading it anywhere near as much as i enjoyed writing it, let me know please!!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so so much for reading, it means a lot! If you comment and kudo, it'll mean so much more and it helps inspire me to keep writing!! If you feel like saying hi on tumblr, I'm @allbesolucky or @javidblue


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